Conditions Governing Use

Before publishing quotations or excerpts from any materials, permission must be obtained from the Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books, and the holder of the copyright, if not Swem Library.

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open to all researchers. Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, such as the Virginia Public Records Act (Code of Virginia. § 42.1-76-91); and the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (Code of Virginia § 2.2-3705.5). Confidential material may include, but is not limited to, educational, medical, and personnel records. If sensitive material is found in this collection, please contact a staff member immediately. The disclosure of personally identifiable information pertaining to a living individual may have legal consequences for which the College of William and Mary assumes no responsibility.

Preferred Citation

Tom Baker papers, Special Collection Research Center, William & Mary Libraries.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Donated by Tom Baker in 2012, with other accruals later in 2012 and 2017.

Biographical / Historical

Tom Baker is a William & Mary graduate with multiple published works. He primarily worked as a corporate advertiser before transitioning to full-time writing in 2010, since then having published three novels and a book of short stories. Novels he has authored include The Sound of One Horse Dancing, Full Frontal, Paperwhite Narcissus, and Green . All of his novels explore perspectives of gay men in the backdrop of major historical events of the 20th century. Each deals with themes of sexual discovery during periods of time in which LGBTQ+ individuals were not openly accepted by society at large.

Baker's novels Full Frontal and Paperwhite Narcissus have won the Beverly Hills Book Award in the LGBT Fiction category in 2013 and 2015 respectively. For the majority of his professional life, he lived in Santa Monica Canyon, CA; he now lives in Gloucester, MA.

Scope and Contents

The Tom Baker papers consist primarily of drafts, working copies, manuscripts, and published copies of the author and William & Mary alumnus Tom Baker's published literary works. The written works represented are The Sound of One Horse Dancing (2011), Full Frontal (2012), Paperwhite Narcissus (2014), Green (2017), and various short stories. Also included are some pieces of correspondence to and from Baker regarding the status of his work, as well as working files of research material for the settings of the novels Green and Paperwhite Narcissus The materials provide insight into the professional literary career and creative process of Baker as he wrote novels that incorporated the use of historical settings as well as the perspective of a gay man in the United States in the mid and late 20th century.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged by accession in the order in which it was receieved, with corresponding subseries within each accession. Original order and folder titles were retained where possible; folder titles were inferred where necessary.

Separated Material

An early review copy of Green (2017) was removed and cataloged in the Rare Books Collections in Swem Library's Special Collections Research Center.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• Authors, American--20th century
• College of William and Mary--Alumni and alumnae
• Gay men's writings, American
• Homosexuality--Fiction.
• Manuscripts for publication
• Novelists, American